Is there a tool that can refactor this C code correctly?
- by Alex
Lets say I have the following code (the array* function are what we use for resizable arrays and they operate on pointers-to-arrays that are null initialized):
typedef struct MyStruct
{
int i;
} MyStruct;
MyStruct* GetNewMyStruct(int i)
{
MyStruct* s = malloc(sizeof(MyStruct));
s->i = i;
return s;
}
int SomeFunction(int number, MyStruct *elem)
{
MyStruct **structs = NULL;
int i;
for (i = 0; i < number; i++)
arrayPush(&structs, GetNewMyStruct(i));
arrayPush(&structs, elem);
return arraySize(&structs);
}
I decide that SomeFunction is too large and I want refactor it. Currently where I work we use VisualAssist X, which has some refactoring capabilities, but when I use it on this it does not work correctly. If I attempt to use it to refactor out the loop, this is what I get:
void MyMethod( int number, MyStruct ** structs )
{
int i;
for (i = 0; i < number; i++)
arrayPush(&structs, GetNewMyStruct(i));
}
int SomeFunction(int number, MyStruct *elem)
{
MyStruct **structs = NULL;
MyMethod(number, structs);
arrrayPush(&structs, elem);
return arraySize(&structs);
}
This is not correct. MyMethod should take a MyStruct ***, not a MyStruct **. This is because the code I'm refactoring takes the address of structs. The result is that the refactored version will always return 1 (since only one object has been pushed into my array) rather than number+1. Are there other tools out there that do this type of refactoring correctly?
